Jesus, Word of God

Image by JackieLou DL from Pixabay

The Church talks about Jesus as the Word of God, and Catholics have gotten used to hearing him called this, but what does it really mean? A word is a message, but how can Jesus be a message? Jesus is God the son, the second person of the trinity, God become man. How can he be a message? Most messages don’t walk, talk, rise from the grave, and save people from their sins!

But what is a message anyway? Think about it for a minute. A message is something of the sender, perhaps a request, or a thought or idea, shared with the receiver. The sharing of a message creates a bond between sender and receiver, one that allows the receiver to have a glimpse inside the sender’s heart and mind. If it’s “Please pass the salt”, the glimpse is only small and momentary, if it’s “Will you marry me?”, it is much greater and for a lifetime, but the principle is the same: a message is, big or small, a sharing of the sender with the receiver. We recognize this with special language when the message being given is one of solemn commitment: we say “I give you my word”. The language is clear: something is being given, and that something, the word, is the commitment.

So what about Jesus? When the time came when God chose to make a commitment to us, to “give us his word”, he opted not just to give us a promise, he chose to give us Himself, and so he did that literally; God the son, second person of the Trinity, became a human being: Jesus. Everything we see in Jesus is God’s commitment, the Word he gives us. Here we see one who loves unconditionally, who will not stop loving even if tortured to death. In Jesus we see that God loves us so much that he himself comes personally to save us. In Jesus, we see that no matter how badly we treat him, God will not withdraw his invitation to us, he will never stop loving us. This is what it means for Jesus to be the Word of God, this is the measure of God’s love for us. Blessed be God!